The good old days of ringing people up anonymously and pretending you are someone else could be a thing of the past [what a strange life you lead.ed]

TrapCall, which is being peddled by TelTech Systems, reveals the phone numbers of, and in some cases the names and addresses, of blocked Caller IDs. TelTech is the outfit which came up with SpoofCard, an Internet calling card service that allows users to place calls in which originating caller numbers appear to be something completely different. Great days were to be had pretending to be the White House or Number 10 Downing Street.

Mobile phone users have long been able to shield their originating number from display by dialling *67 before placing a call.  Since mobiles which called 800-numbers were immune to this TrapCall takes advantage of the hole.

Punters have to reprogram their phones to send all rejected, missed, and unanswered calls to TrapCall. The user presses a button on the handset that is normally used to send the call to voicemail. The call is then rerouted to TrapCall's toll-free line, where the caller's information is obtained and then sent back to the original call's recipient.  It is supposed to take six seconds and the caller just listens to a normal dial tone.

The downside is that victims of domestic abuse could reveal their addresses if they ever call their abuser. This sometimes happens when the victim and abuser have joint custody of the kids.